


summer in the air

by lacquer



Series: love + fear [2]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fashion & Models, Fluff, M/M, Returning Home, Reunions, literally just relationship possibility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 04:44:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21112862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lacquer/pseuds/lacquer
Summary: His heartbeat is loud in his ears. Junhui is wearing layers upon layers and a vest with at least ten pockets. There’s a bucket hat on his head, and an actual bucket in his hand. His face is… well, it’s smiling, something so incredibly delighted with the world in front of him that it hurts to look at. The hand not carrying the bucket, waves. “Mingyu! Is that you?”Mingyu takes probably too long to answer that question, piecing his words together from the breath remaining in his lungs. “Yeah, it’s me, how did you know?”“I’ve seen your underwear ads,” replies Junhui, and Mingyu chokes. “Just kidding! Kinda. Your mom called mine, said you were home.”





	summer in the air

**Author's Note:**

> hi, hello, what's up.  
i should know better than to listen to marina when i've got things to do, and yet i'm back here again. suggested listening is orange trees off of love + fear for an idea of what possessed me! title is from the same song.  
there is no real plot, but sometimes being soft is all the plot u need  
unbeta'd because i wrote this all in one morning, enjoy~

Mingyu arrives in town as the sunset pulls its wings into the sea. Lights flicker on around him, little shops and houses glowing golden in the summer heat. It’s a small town, a place where everyone knows everyone. He should know, he used to live here.

The sunset is bloody, fire taking up half the sky, and Mingyu walks in slowly, taking his time. He’s wearing a facemask and has his hat pulled low. No need for the town to notice him just yet. No doubt they would soon enough, and then any semblance of rest he might get out of this adventure would be gone.

The trip through the town’s center doesn’t take too long—despite being gone for five years, Mingyu remembers all the shortcuts. He passes a dried up fountain, a long dead inn, the playground he had broken his first bone in.

A couple more blocks and he gets to his destination for the night: a white shuttered house, trimmed in navy. Despite, or maybe because of, being gone so long, Mingyu’s heart gives an unsteady leap.

The places where dreams are born are often small, tucked away from the world. It is as true for him as any other. He breathes in deep, sea air thick on his tongue. Without his conscious consent his shoulders drop a quarter inch. He closes his eyes, and waits a second. 

It’s a habit he picked up somewhere around Paris, during his second year as a model. When the world seemed all too ready to wash him away, neonbright and sharp, Mingyu would take a moment and listen for his heartbeat. It was hard to hear himself sometimes, underneath the fashion world’s frenetic insistence on  _ newer, better, more. _

Here in his childhood home, his pulse is steady. He can hear the crash of sea waves and gulls close by, can feel his clothing shift against his skin in the breeze. It’s nothing like the textured silk and linens of his photoshoots and somehow it’s that detail that lets him relax all the way. He opens his eyes. 

When he knocks on the door, his mother opens it within seconds, as if she had been waiting for him. She might have. At the sight of him, her eyes fill with tears, and Mingyu spends a second sighing quietly because he can already feel himself tearing up in return. 

“My  _ son. _ ” She says, love in every syllable. “You’re home.”

“I’m back, eomma.” Mingyu replies, folding her into a hug. She’s shorter than he remembers. Maybe he’s taller. 

Against his chest he can feel her shaking, but her arms around him are fierce. It’s as if she’s reclaiming him, shooing away the outside world. Nothing can touch Mingyu when he’s in his mother’s arms. 

When she leans back, it’s to brush a finger over his cheekbone, wipe away the tears there. She steps back and looks him over. “It’s been so long. You look tired, dear.”

Mingyu feels tired. A feeling taking up residence in his bones, between the walls of his heart. An instinct to simply lie down: on the catwalk, in his apartment, here on his own front step. He’s been tired for a while now. However, even now there are some things he will not say. He smiles at her instead, as wide as he can, and makes his eyes crinkle. “I’m home now though, right?”

“You are.” His mother replies, and takes his hand, gives it a few firm pats as if she’s trying to convince herself that he still exists. That’s fair. Sometimes Mingyu has to convince himself too. “Let me show you your room, I aired it out just yesterday. Then we can have dinner and catch up. You are going to tell me about the world.”

Mingyu has called home every Sunday, international rates and timezones be damned against the chance to hear her voice. There’s nothing about his career that she doesn’t know. Still, he goes easily. It’s different to say it in person. 

He listens for his heartbeat as he walks up the stairs, hears it juxtaposed against the rustle of wind outside, the creak of their old railings. Half a world away, across international phone lines, the sounds of home were never so loud as they are now. Very abruptly, he wants to cry again. Maybe he never stopped. 

“It’s good to be back.” He says instead, tongue swelled around tears. “It’s good to be home.”

The evening is a subtle affair after that. Mingyu remembers things with the hazy clarity that joy brings: the taste of his mother’s kimchi, the weight of their kitchen knives in his palm, the smell of the sea coming in through the windows, left open. 

He goes to bed with a full stomach and the warmth of his mother’s embrace lingering around his shoulders. It’s easy to change into his sleeping clothes and tuck himself into bed, window left open so that he could hear the sound of the sea. For the first time in months, he falls asleep quickly. 

It must be some time around 4am when he gets up again. This too, is something he’s used to. After traveling as much as he did—for shoots, for contracts, just for his company’s kicks—he knows how to weather jet lag. With a silent apology to his mother, he changes into workout clothes, leaves her a note, and goes out for a run. 

The town is even more familiar in the dark. Without the illumination of the sun he can pretend that nothing’s changed, that all the storefronts are just as he remembers them. He windes through the town, path taking him out along the cliffs, where he can hear the crash of waves far below. The moon lights the path enough for him to see, a half closed eye hanging over the mountains to his left.

He’s worked up a sweat and is halfway down the ocean path, when he meets Junhui. Mingyu stops in place, his calves trembling a little, and stares. He’s grown up.

His heartbeat is loud in his ears. Junhui is wearing layers upon layers and a vest with at least ten pockets. There’s a bucket hat on his head, and an actual bucket in his hand. His face is… well, it’s smiling, something so incredibly delighted with the world in front of him that it hurts to look at. The hand not carrying the bucket, waves. “Mingyu! Is that you?”

Mingyu takes probably too long to answer that question, piecing his words together from the breath remaining in his lungs. “Yeah, it’s me, how did you know?”

“I’ve seen your underwear ads,” replies Junhui, and Mingyu chokes. “Just kidding! Kinda. Your mom called mine, said you were home.”

Mingyu’s heart slowly returns to a resting state, and he grins, just a little shy. “I’m here for a while, actually. One of my supervisors in the company made me take some time off.” On pain of death, but he’ll keep that one to himself.

At that, Junhui takes a second to look him over. The look is piercing, but kind. A look that makes Mingyu trust, even as it peels back his layers. “You look like you need it.” This is the second time since returning that someone has told him he looks exhausted. Frankly, Mingyu hopes it isn’t the start of a trend. “Have you had anything to eat today?”

When Mingyu shakes his head, Junhui pulls an orange from one of his many pockets and tosses it at him. “Breakfast is important!” While Mingyu fumbles with it, Junhui swoops in close, wraps him in a hug. “Welcome back.”

Junhui’s arms are strong, and he smells like salt, like fish. Mingyu makes himself small, rests his chin on Junhui’s shoulder and lets himself take a deep breath. “Thank you.”

It’s a different welcome from the one he got just hours before. Unlike his mother, Mingyu had called Junhui only occasionally. Too afraid, perhaps, of what would be on the other end of the line. Possibility was just as frightening as reality. What was worse than leaving behind a boyfriend? Leaving behind the hope of one. 

When they pull away, Mingyu starts peeling the orange. The sharp smell of citrus hits the air and he breathes in deep. “How have you been?” 

Junhui rocks back on his heels. Mingyu gets the feeling that he’s seen something else in their interactions, entirely outside of what he’s said out loud, and has chosen not to comment. Kindness and perception, two halves of an uncalculated reflex. “I’ve been good.” He flashes a smile. “A community theater program started up in town recently, they were more than happy to have someone as handsome as I am in it.”

Junhui suits the stage. Mingyu laughs in delight, recognition of the fact. It’s loud beneath the dark sky. “That’s good. You’ll have to tell me if there’s a performance going on while I’m here.”

The grin Junhui flashes him is brighter than all the stars above their heads. “I will. A front row seat, just for you.”

“You’d better.” The smile Mingyu gives him in return is helplessly fond. “Where are you going?” Mingyu isn’t sure why he says it, only that he very suddenly wants to also be going there. 

Junhui pauses. “I’m going to fish.”

“This late?” Mingyu turns a palm up to the sky, open as if to catch the stars above them. “Will you be able to see?”

Junhui laughs. “The sun will come up soon. It’s not so late as it is early.”

He hadn’t noticed it before, but there, on the edge of the horizon, is a faint blush in the sky. The faintest lightening of the blue, the difference between lightless-ocean and navy. “Oh. I’ll, see you later then?”

There’s another moment where Junhui just looks at him. Mingyu forces himself not to move, waits the consideration out.. “Come with me.”

“Come where?”

“Come fishing.” Junhui’s smile curls up, mischievous and warm. “You’ll like it, I promise.”

Without really thinking about it Mingyu nods. The charisma in that smile keeps him agreeing, all the way out to Junhui’s boat, all the way out of the harbor, straight out to open ocean. 

It’s only there, land a distant smudge on the horizon, that Mingyu thinks to question things like, “You do know I don’t know how to fish, right?”

“ _ Shhhhh. _ ” Junhui waves a hand at him, gestures to the water. “Listen, the fish are talking.” The fish are not talking. Or at least if they are, it’s not in any language that Mingyu has learned.

This is so completely outside of anything he’s ever tried to do. Mingyu cannot charm the fish, cannot pose for them, cannot ask them how to walk down a runway. He looks at Junhui instead, takes in the glass edged focus in his eyes, the stillness of his hands. Watches as Junhui brings in the net like he’s dancing with the ocean, convincing her to part with her pearls. 

He breathes in the salt air and feels himself relax another quarter-inch.

Later, when they get back to land, Junhui invites him over for dinner. “Your mom is welcome to come, we’ve got enough food to feed you both.”

Mingyu nods, and that’s how he finds himself at Junhui’s doorstep two hours later, carrying a small collection of tupperware. His mother has looped her arm through his, and somehow convinced him to carry everything (not that it took a lot of convincing). 

Junhui is the one to answer the door, beaming at the two of them like their company is a gift he had ordered for himself. “Come in!” 

The Wen household is warm, kindness seeping out of its walls, and Junhui’s mother greets Mingyu’s own with a bubbling hug. He’s directed to the kitchen, where Junhui’s mother relieves him of his tupperware, shooing him outside. “If you really feel the need to be useful, you can get us some oranges, dear.” She glances at Junhui. “Someone hasn’t stopped talking about showing you the orchard since your return.”

For once, Junhui is on his back foot, grabbing Mingyu’s wrist and tugging him outside. He doesn’t look at Mingyu as he pulls him towards the stand of orange trees in the back of the house. 

“So,” Mingyu says, half teasing, half overwhelmingly hopeful, “couldn’t stop talking about me, huh?”

Junhui chances a glance at him and is apparently satisfied with whatever he sees on Mingyu’s face, because he releases his wrist. Mingyu resists the urge to ask for it back.

“I wanted it to be your choice to come over.” It’s a polite gesture, a statement with no pressure. It dances around the real question, too. 

Mingyu feels the shape of a response in his mouth:  _ you can hold me here, I promise.  _ Swallows it. Says instead, “I won’t leave for a while.”

Junhui hums at that, and gestures to where a couple of baskets are piled at the base of the orange trees. “Help me with this?”

It’s easy to nod, follow Junhui’s lead, grab a basket. It’s always been easy with Junhui—a possibility never explored, a story only half told. Maybe Mingyu has time now, to tell the story.

The smell of oranges is heavy in the air, mixing sweetly with the salt air as Junhui shows him which ones to pick. Mingyu’s gaze lingers on his fingers, his hair, all of it made golden by the setting sun.

“So how was it, being a model?” Junhui asks, when they’ve settled into a rhythm. 

“It was, is…” Mingyu trails off.  _ Glamorous _ isn’t a lie. Neither is  _ demanding.  _ What he says though, is, “It’s lonely. It’s a lonely job. You don’t get called up with your friends that much, and when you do, there isn’t much time to talk. You forget what you need up on the catwalk.”

When Junhui doesn’t say anything else, Mingyu continues. It’s as if all the words are spilling out of him, everything he couldn’t tell his mother rushing out like a river meeting the sea, Junhui’s forthright kindness creating a space for it all. “It wasn’t that I wasn’t happy. I had so many things to be happy about. It’s just… there was never a moment for peace.”

“Like this.” Junhui says. It’s a statement of fact, of certainty. 

“Yeah.” Mingyu sighs. “Like this.” When he looks back, Junhui’s eyes are lit from within by the sun, not yet entirely set. Summer is in the air: salt breeze, oranges, the smell of cooking meat from inside the house. There’s never been a place like this before, Mingyu is sure. No matter how far he’s traveled, he’s never found another place like home. 

“It’s good that you’ll be here for a while, then.” Junhui says. Bending down, he plucks a flower from the ground, tucks it behind Mingyu’s ear. And then, Instead of pulling away, he reaches out a hand and takes Mingyu’s own. “You’ve got time to figure things out.”

_ It won’t take that long.  _ Mingyu thinks. Standing here, holding Junhui’s hand, he thinks it’s ok even if it does. For once in his life, he has time to spare.

**Author's Note:**

> if you enjoyed, please leave a comment!! <3  
i'm on twitter/cc @lavenderim if you'd like to chat!


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